MacBook Pro Updates?

What is the word on the internet about an update to the MacBook Pro? According to http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ we are due an update in around two months if one goes by the average. What features do you hope to see in the new release? I for one would be content with more: more cores, more RAM, longer battery life. Apple can scrap the optical drive, while they are at it , I'll use an external the two times a year I need to read a DVD.

The scuttlebutt is 3Q2012. The misses and I are waiting in anticipation for the announcement. We have a handful of iOS devices, and this will be our first plunge into full-bore OSX. I would surmise quad-core options to be available. If they do pull the optical drive, I really hope they update the SuperDrive so it'll work on the new Macbook Pros.

Given the low stock in stores, and online, I would say the new models are going to hit pretty soon. Maybe not the major revision people are thinking about, but at least a processor bump. Of course, I hope I'm wrong and we get something cool.

They don't sell very many of them and the vast majority of abandoned 17" customers will happily/begrudgingly migrate to a new super sleek, lighter, thinner MBP15 anyway, especially if it has a Retina Display.

Any tiny sales they lose from 17" customers leaving the platform will be more than be made up for by the reduced costs of the simplified lineup.

I like how Apple is allegedly contemplating killing off the two machines I used the most. The 17" MBP and the Mac Pro. Sigh.

I currently run a Mac Pro and 17" MacBook Pro like you, and would be super pissed if they disappeared from the lineup. Hopefully the Xeon E5 will make its way into the Pro tower soon, I would love to eventually replace my early 08 model, but not with 2 year old hardware.

Bah. Given the discovery that my MBP doesn't have a recovery partition, and won't connect to the home WiFi for internet restore, had I not burnt the 10.7 installer to DVD, the clusterf*ck that was the 10.7.4 update I attempted on Friday would have been much, much worse…

Not to forget, DiskWarrior won't update without a CD-R drive. Just today I wanted to update it again and had no CD-R at hand and thought "what a stupid upgrading process, I have DW on an external HDD with a recovery partition!"It's 2012 and Alsoft still insists on creating a bootable disk...

It's the exact same thing Apple has already done with floppies and USB. Sure, people will scream and yell for a year or two, and then we're all better off.

Given the lack of a recovery partition (which was news to me until I tried to use it) and the inability of my MBP to see the home WiFi when attempting internet recovery, you'll forgive me if I want to cling on to my optical media just a little bit longer…

Though I'm sure your situation was valid, it's hardly a common enough scenario to justify retaining a legacy technology for the entire platform.

Was I just supposed to put the entire laptop in the bin if it didn't have an optical drive? The 10.7.4 SU hung during install; a reboot left the machine unable to boot from its main drive, there was no Restore Partition and (for some reason I can't fathom) it was unable to see my WiFi network when it attempted internet recovery. Sorry, but when someone says to me: "You'll be fine as long as you can connect to the internet", the very first thing my production manager's head says is: "Yeah? And what if I can't connect to the internet?"

That's far too much like flying by the seat of your pants, and I use this machine for my entire livelihood…

Given the lack of a recovery partition (which was news to me until I tried to use it) and the inability of my MBP to see the home WiFi when attempting internet recovery, you'll forgive me if I want to cling on to my optical media just a little bit longer…

No, I won't . Seriously, why on Earth are you using optical for that rather then a USB stick? They're smaller, more rugged, can be made and updated more easily, boot and interact far faster, etc etc. Superior in every single way. I got rid of my recovery partition because I don't want to waste valuable space on my SSD boot drive for something worthless, but I haven't actually booted off of optical media in probably years and years now. I've always either netbooted or used an external HDD, or later solid state.

Seriously, why on Earth are you using optical for that rather then a USB stick?

That's a very good question! Maybe I am overly fixated on optical, but it's not just the OS. I rely on big, expensive software for a living. Install Adobe CS over the air? No, thanks. I know Adobe wants me to pay a monthly fee to rent my software but, really, no. I need control over the software my livelihood depends on; control not entirely dependent on my ISP maintaining 100% uptime.

That's a very good question! Maybe I am overly fixated on optical, but it's not just the OS. I rely on big, expensive software for a living. Install Adobe CS over the air? No, thanks. I know Adobe wants me to pay a monthly fee to rent my software but, really, no. I need control over the software my livelihood depends on; control not entirely dependent on my ISP maintaining 100% uptime.

I'm sure that, if it's available on hard media at all, the next generation of CS will come on a USB stick rather than DVDs.

Same. I still haven't used optical in ages, and if it ever came up, a $30 external USB DVD drive would take care of it. Why waste that weight and volume 100% of the time for software installations?

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Install Adobe CS over the air? No, thanks.

Why not? For everyone except adobe, standard download images (or zipped executables) has been the normal method of distribution for more then a decade. Even Adobe got on the train years ago though, and when I bought CS5.5 it just came as a normal dmg. It's far faster, cheaper, and more reliable then optical media. I can trivially back it up anywhere, load it extremely fast, etc. If it was optical media I'd just have imaged it and saved the image anyway, but thankfully that's no longer necessary.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with optical. Conflating the two is frankly completely ridiculous and just plain weird :\. Is there any Mac software left that isn't download? Even the slowest of the slow (CAD programs in my experience) are mostly onboard nowadays. Wanting to get your bytes in the form of optical plastic vs superior methods makes no sense, and has zero relation to software services, clouds, or whatever.

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I need control over the software my livelihood depends on; control not entirely dependent on my ISP maintaining 100% uptime.

Which is why images are good and optical is bad. Optical has zero to do with "100% ISP uptime". Welcome to the Year 2000.

I'm sure that, if it's available on hard media at all, the next generation of CS will come on a USB stick rather than DVDs.

Actually it'll probably still be DVD, just because it's cheaper and pretty much "use once", so USB direct has no particular benefits. They'll probably still offer a DVD option for a while, because there are still people even in the First World without access to any broadband. If I was forced to get it on DVD though I'd still only use the DVD long enough to image it, and then install from that (and back it up), same as back in the old 10.6 days. Come to think of it, Apple was one of the odd laggards with image distribution. It was great when they fixed that with Lion.

Yeah, maybe if you think Apple is poor and needs donations. Otherwise you'd just hop on Amazon and type "external dvd drive", which looks right now like it'd set you back between $10-40 depending on how fancy you'd like. And that's brand new, could probably just ask around and get one for a song, it's obsolete tech.

Actually it'll probably still be DVD, just because it's cheaper and pretty much "use once", so USB direct has no particular benefits.

... other than being compatible with most portables that will be sold by that point. I don't think Apple will be alone in abandoning the optical drive. It just takes up such an enormous amount of space that could be used for things that actually matter, like 4 RAM slots, a discrete GPU in smaller models, a second blade SSD slot, and/or yet more battery capacity.

I think sellers offering DVDs will find that they are useless to the majority of customers no later than mid-2013.

I still need an optical drive to burn Windows OS installer disks as one reason. Creating bootable USB flash windoze installers ain't that easy when there isn't a winblowz machine already setup and running. The other problem with that POS dumb OS is that if the USB flash has a GPT partition map (as mine do), windows won't recognise it or use it. I've still got thousands of audio cd's i've yet to extract audio from and i've hundreds of cdroms from old magazines I still use and I keep them on that media because I dont have 2TB SSD yet.

I don't give a shit what the rest of you do or don't do. I want a 17" 1920x1200 MBP with an optical drive.

I still need an optical drive to burn Windows OS installer disks as one reason.[...]I've still got thousands of audio cd's i've yet to extract audio from and i've hundreds of cdroms from old magazines I still use and I keep them on that media

How are these reasons for an MBP to need an optical drive?

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because I dont have 2TB SSD yet.

WTF do you need an SSD to store audio for? I hope that was a typo, because otherwise this sounds pretty foolish. If you meant to write "HDD" instead then a 2TB USB 3.0 drive is something like $120-150.

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I don't give a shit what the rest of you do or don't do. I want a 17" 1920x1200 MBP with an optical drive.

Well, I suspect the feeling is mutual and you'll be outvoted, though I suppose there's a tiny tiny chance Apple will be odd and keep it one more gen.

As noted in our forums, two new benchmark results appearing in Geekbench's database within the past few days are sparking discussion about imminent upgrades to Apple's MacBook Pro and iMac lines.

The first item of interest is a MacBookPro9,1 entry, which would correspond to an unreleased MacBook Pro model of unknown size coming as a successor to the current MacBookPro8,x line. While such results can be faked, the result in question is consistent with what is known or assumed about the forthcoming models.

This new MacBook Pro is listed as carrying an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3820QM quad-core processor running at 2.7 GHz. That processor has long been viewed as the natural successor to Apple's current offerings in high-end 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models. With the i7-3820QM being a 45-watt chip, it is extremely unlikely that Apple would be using it in a new 13-inch MacBook Pro model.

Looks like a single, redesigned 15" model. I bet you both the 13" and 17" MBPs are quietly discontinued the day it is announced with no explanation.

And that's brand new, could probably just ask around and get one for a song, it's obsolete tech.

I'll be honest: you've convinced me. I think the urge for optical is a largely reflexive one born of many years' habit, and USB storage would certainly meet the use cases that have been bothering me. The only instance where I still think DVDs have a place in my workflow is archiving, and that doesn't require portability, so an external could quite feasibly join the other peripherals that don't travel with me when I undock the MBP.

(I think my objection to not getting a physical copy of Adobe Creative Suite is just that, somehow, my mind rebels at the thought of spending a thousand pounds and not owning any physical object. It must be the money, because the bit of software I use most after CS is Manga Studio EX, which I quite happily bought as a download.)

And that's brand new, could probably just ask around and get one for a song, it's obsolete tech.

(I think my objection to not getting a physical copy of Adobe Creative Suite is just that, somehow, my mind rebels at the thought of spending a thousand pounds and not owning any physical object. It must be the money, because the bit of software I use most after CS is Manga Studio EX, which I quite happily bought as a download.)

*chuckles* I remember supplying a customer with the entire Adobe font library on CDROM many years ago. 20 cent CD in a teak case with brass hinges. When you spent $10k on software they used to jazz it up for you, these days, you spend, and all you get is an invoice in your email.